


Clam Attack (Remastered)

by snapspark



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Anxiety, Character Study, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 19:21:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18556192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snapspark/pseuds/snapspark
Summary: Taeyong is anxious beyond relief, and Dongyoung is in the bathroom. Youngho is here.





	Clam Attack (Remastered)

 

“Do you know where Doyoung is?”

“Doyoung just went to the bathroom."

“How inopportune. I have to ask him for a favour later, after you’re up on stage to…” but Taeyong has stopped listening.

He stares up at the white, three pronged fans on the ceiling.

Amidst their mundane chat earlier that Taeyong was exerting his haywire mind to participate in, he had cut himself off abruptly and said, “Actually, hey…”

Dongyoung waited a moment for him to express himself. He realized quickly that whatever it was would take longer than that.

So, wanting to give Taeyong only his fullest attention, Dongyoung had held up a hand. “Hyung? Hang on. In a sec. I’ll be right back.”

Taeyong had looked down at his phone. They certainly had the time. But Taeyong didn’t need a sec. Taeyong didn’t even need his full attention. This was an emergency, and in all honesty Taeyong felt like a child in the middle of an asthma attack, and someone just took the inhaler out of his mouth.

 

* * *

 

Around him people drifted in and out, back and forth.

He’s not sure how he looks from the outside, but he feels like an alien in the room. On another frequency from all the backstage buzz. Tight-mouthed, jaw clenched, forcing air through his nose. Blood in his ears, barely able to hear his own curt breathing under the commanding drum of his thumping blood. Even that private, malleable space inside him, outside of the public’s domain, from which everything that matters to him stems and is where it’s stored, that too has been breached—his command center under attack, sirens going off. Among the cacophony inside his head, he locates his one conscious strand of thought, speaks with himself to calm down, to fill a palpable absence.

 

[ _Doyoung_ enters his mind.]

 

 _Taeyong_ : Tell me. Is this problem _really_ urgent? Is this so important? 

 _Doyoung_ : It’s unlikely.

 _Taeyong_ _:_ Still. Was Dongyoung gonna wet himself if he didn’t go?

 _Doyoung_ _:_ [laugh] Also unlikely.

[pause]

 

 _Taeyong_ _:_ What would Dongyoung say?

 _Doyoung_ _:_ “Are these valid worries?”

 _Taeyong_ _: “_ They are valid if I feel them.”

 _Doyoung_ _:_ “Are these rational worries?”

 _Taeyong_ _:_ “Sometimes I can’t make myself feel what I think. That's how fear _works_.”

 _Doyoung_ _: “_ Some days you just have to be scared out of your mind, and it’s something you have to live with.”

 _Doyoung_ _:_ “But you know I believe you can do it.” (This particular memory ends here.)

 _Taeyong_ _:_ Thank you for trying.

 _Taeyong_ _:_ I think I would just really like to hear someone tell me I’m wrong.

 _Taeyong_ _:_ I would really like to hear his voice right now, telling me anything.

* * *

There are five more minutes.

Taeyong thinks about lying down on the cold floor, downing a bottle of water, or letting the scream inside his lungs rip. He’s sending distress signals in frequencies through the air across the room, stadium, all of Japan. They didn’t have enough time, could only afford to be 80% prepared for the show. Should all things be fortunate, they’ll get away with it seamlessly. He wasn’t a perfectionist, but it’s not like he hasn’t made mistakes in the past that eat away at him, even now.

So many people around, but no help in sight.

That’s what it feels like, until someone from behind picks up his hand.

 

* * *

 

 

“Breathe,” Youngho says. 

Youngho’s hand is broad and warm, a stark contrast to his icy claws.

Taeyong tries to do it the way he sees Youngho does it, opening his chest up like an accordion. His thumping blood eases. Taeyong holds on to that hand, grasping at it like a thread of light in the dark. His chest swells with gratitude, and the reminder that he really isn’t alone.

Taeyong feels like he can tell Youngho, if he doesn’t feel like he can tell anyone else.

“What if I forget my lines?”

Youngho sits down beside him. Taeyong closes his eyes and imagines Dongyoung across him, and Dongyoung, upon hearing this, giving him a slow hand rub and a smile out of one corner of his mouth. Dongyoung knows there’s no point talking sense into a kid who thinks the only car on a ferris wheel doomed to fall down is his own. Maybe he also knows about the things more valuable to Taeyong. Taeyong doesn’t know anymore whether he needs the words, or the man who says them.

After a minute, Youngho answers. “Then you move on, to what you do remember.”

Taeyong is taken aback. He feels the unfamiliar words drift over him, like a gentle tide repeatedly washing out against the beach, smoothing the jagged rocks and sands. Youngho puts a hand on his own chest to demonstrate inhaling. It doesn’t feel like a cure, nor does it answer his questions, but Taeyong can see the charm in occasionally breathing.

Someone calls for Johnny. He gives Taeyong a loving squeeze on his hand before excusing himself.

Taeyong gets one last pat on his shoulder. He turns around to smile apologetically at Youngho.

“I forget you’re here sometimes. Seriously. Thank you.”

It’s Dongyoung. He looks bewilderedly down at him.

Youngho, still keeping an eye on him, seems to have got the gist. When Taeyong looks back to Dongyoung he feels like a lost child being handed back to his parent at the service desk of a mall. In a bout of half-insanity, he wants to be apologized to, like he’d been left in the aisles of the market.

Dongyoung, with his expertise on humans, assesses the damage swiftly.

He sits down beside Taeyong and the universe unpauses.

 

* * *

 

 

“All good? No harm done?”

Taeyong looks exasperatedly at him. If he could only convey—somehow, again, in words—the entire journey he had gone through internally, maybe he could actually get Dongyoung to feel a little guilty. But that’s meaningless now.

“Yeah, I pulled my shit together.”

“Huh!” Dongyoung sits back, his eyes twinkling proudly. “Didn’t need my help after all.”

“Mhm. Good thing there are more than two people in this band,” Taeyong rolls his eyes. “Still, that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to go when…”

But he had started a sentence he can’t finish.

“When…?”

He’s too exhausted, coming down from adrenaline, to make something up.

Taeyong extends a shaky hand Dongyoung’s way. It’s taken up in a soft grasp automatically.

“Hey, I’m here.” Dongyoung says. “I’ll be here.”

He knows. Taeyong loves him dearly, one of his best friends.

“Thanks, Dongyoungie.”

They sit quietly with each other for two minutes before the coordinator comes to help them put their mics on.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the weibo live where, when asked the question how they relieve stress before a show, Taeyong answered 'scream' and Johnny answered 'breathe'. Also I love dotae !
> 
> This is a remastered version of an older fic of mine by the same title. I rewrote it because I wanted to capture a more realistic experience of anxiety.


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